Study Says More Time in Child Care Connected to Bad Behavior

Children who spend time in child-care centers have better cognitive
and language skills than children in other arrangements, including care
by their mothers, but those benefits may be coming at a cost, according
to the latest findings from a long-running federal study.

The findings, released last week, showed that the more time children
spent in any type of nonmaternal child care, the more at risk they were
for behavior problems such as aggressiveness and disobedience.

Specifically, 17 percent of the children who had spent more than 30
hours a week in child care by the time they were 41/2 years old were
rated by their caregivers, mothers, and teachers as being aggressive
toward other children in kindergarten. On the other hand, only 6
percent of the children who were in child care less than 10 hours a
week showed the same behavior problems.

Those new results from the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
were presented in Minneapolis last week at the biennial meeting of the
Society for Research in Child Development, a 5,300-member professional
organization based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "I think
the data imply that less time in child care may carry some benefits,"
said Jay Belsky, a principal investigator for the NICHD study and a
professor at the University of London, Birkbeck College, in
England.

The study began in 1991 at 10 sites around the United States with
more than 1,300 newborns. The children in the project—which costs
about $10 million a year to run—are now in 5th grade, and
researchers hope to continue following them.

Findings Fuel Debate

The project's latest findings are unlikely to resolve the long-
standing debate among parents and policymakers over whether child care
outside the family's home is helpful or harmful. In fact, even members
of the NICHD research team have differences of opinion about the
results and whether they should be used to make policy
recommendations.

During a telephone news briefing, Sarah L. Friedman, the scientific
coordinator for the NICHD study, described the children with more
behavior difficulties as "demanding"—but Mr. Belsky quickly
interjected that they were far more than that, saying those children
were moody, argumentative, and had explosive tempers.

Still, he said, just because some children demonstrate more behavior
problems, it doesn't mean they are out of control. "I don't want
someone to think we are talking about psychopaths," he said.

But he added that when the researchers analyze data on the children
from 3rd grade, those youngsters might very well be the ones who were
having disciplinary problems in school.

Mr. Belsky also said the results call for policies that would help
families cut back on the amount of time children are in child care,
such as employer policies that would allow longer parental leave after
a child is born or more opportunities for part-time work schedules.

Ms. Friedman, however, argued that it was premature for the NICHD to
make recommendations. She described extended parental leave as "a quick
solution," and one that could have detrimental effects on the economic
security of many families.

Unanswered Questions

Both investigators, as well as others on the research team, agree
that they still don't have an explanation for the reports of children's
bad behavior.

Mr. Belsky speculated that the behavior might have nothing to do
with child care itself, but could be due to the way children relate to
parents after hours of separation.

Another interpretation, said Kathleen McCartney, a principal
investigator for the study and a professor at Harvard University's
graduate school of education, could be that parents with problem-prone
children elect to leave them in child care for longer hours. The
researchers, she said, need to analyze the data in a "more
fine-grained" way to find some of the answers to those questions.

Ms. McCartney noted that most of the children who spent long hours
in care did not show behavior problems. And, she said, another
important finding was that there was a connection between what
policymakers could regulate—such as adult-child ratios in
child-care centers—and the outcomes for children.

"Hopefully," she said, "our data can be used to improve child-care
quality in this country."

Marilou Hyson, an associate executive director of the
Washington-based National Association for the Education of Young
Children, said the findings suggest that training teachers to focus on
intellectual and language development is not enough. They should also
know how to provide children with activities that "support positive
peer interaction," she said.

One of the objectives of the study is to explore the effects of
schooling on children who come from different child-care backgrounds.
And an initial look at 1st grade shows great variability in the
instruction children are receiving—so much that the researchers
say children's needs could be going unmet.

They found that more than 15 percent of the 1st grade classrooms
they observed lacked literacy instruction; and in more than 35 percent
of the classrooms, children did not receive feedback from teachers
during lessons.

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